


Fire is on my trail

by belmanoir



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Post-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-31
Updated: 2012-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-02 20:17:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belmanoir/pseuds/belmanoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki ends up on earth. Eventually, Thor finds him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire is on my trail

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd.

Loki hits the ground with a sound like thunder.

It isn't thunder. It's just his body absorbing the double impact of crossing realms and slamming shoulder first into concrete.

It makes the marrow of his bones ache just like thunder, though.

###

He's on earth, he realizes when he wakes up in a hospital. They can't understand why his bruises are fading so fast. He wonders which is more effort, talking his way out or calling up an illusion. In the end, he waits to be discharged.

It would be easier to heal if he could sleep. He can never sleep when he and Thor are quarreling.

He'll have to learn.

###

It seems like too much coincidence, that he should land in this realm. He'd been so sure he would die. That he would finally have the last word. Sometimes, he wonders if this is another plan of Odin's. Whether he's supposed to be learning something from this.

It isn't. Odin wouldn't waste the effort on him.

###

Earth is full of people like him. People who have fallen through the cracks, who pass unnoticed at the edges of things. It would be easy to live like them, allow his beard to grow, stop bathing and sleep in the streets. Unlike them, the cold can't hurt him. He can charm enough money from the pockets of the unwary for one or two tasteless meals a day. There would be a pleasure in giving up and crawling, in huddling in a stinking corner and mumbling to himself.

He still hasn't returned to his full power. He knows Heimdall can see him.

###

He was born to con, has fooled everyone into thinking him one of them from the cradle. He doesn't need the endless arcana of the grifter's discipline, honed and passed down over centuries, but it fascinates him. He masters its ins and outs and amuses himself with slavishly following every rule an old grifter passes along over a poker game like a sacred relic of an old war. It feels natural, his clothing and hair and manners changing beyond recognition from one week or day or moment to the next. He shifts and slides like water. He could probably change his face if he tried. It could be one more veil in the illusion of separation and belonging.

He can't bring himself to do it.

###

There isn't enough risk. Even gambling isn't much fun. Cheating is a little better--that way he's at least assured either of the thrill of getting away with something or of the satisfaction of a fight. If he doesn't use magic, he can almost pretend he has a chance of losing.

The problem is that humans can't really hurt him. He thinks about taking on the superbeings of this world. But one of them might kill him. That would be entirely too easy for Thor. Even making Thor watch isn't good enough anymore. When he dies, he plans to leave Thor's strong hands covered in his blood, or frost-bitten from being wrapped around Loki's blue throat. 

###

He doesn't know what to do when he isn't working. For as long as he can remember, his time has been filled with the petty concerns of Thor and his friends. 

Brotherhood is not friendship. It is a connection that needs nothing to sustain it but the illusion of shared blood. It is supposed to be permanent and unchangeable, an unanswerable substitute for true affinity. He and Thor suffered each other's company, even imagined they enjoyed it, for the sake of that lie. 

Loki is glad to be free of it, but he believed the lie for so long that the truth is hard to find. He doesn't know how to fill his spare hours. 

They are many. He still can't sleep.

###

"Mr. Walker?" The concierge sounds doubtful. "There are two people here to see you?"

Loki mutes the America's Next Top Model rerun--he likes reality television, its tyrannies, pettiness, and envy on display without shame. He glances at the clock. Three a.m. His first thought is the police. He has nothing to fear from them. "Did they give their names?"

"Dr. Jane Foster and Mr. Thor--" She hesitates. In the background there's a deep rumble like low thunder. Loki's bones ache. "Odinson," the concierge repeats. She lowers her voice. "He's wearing armor and carrying a hammer."

"Send them up," Loki says. "And send up a bottle of champagne."

###

So this is Dr. Foster. She's small, in skinny jeans and boots. Sharp eyes and messy hair. If he wanted to win her over, he'd pretend to be canvassing for a charity. An environmental one. 

He smiles at her. "So you fixed the Bifrost?" Thor seems, as always, oblivious to any latent hostility in his face or voice.

Dr. Foster, though, looks nervous. Smart girl. "I didn't fix it," she hedges. "I found a way to create an unstable temporary substitute." She glances at Thor for guidance. He's about to down his glass of champagne in one gulp. "Stop, you sip it!" She demonstrates.

Thor sips, making a suspicious face at his glass. Dr. Foster glances at Loki, silently inviting him to share her fond amusement. Loki wipes his face blank.

"Only you can fix the Bifrost, brother," Thor says. "And now that Jane's found you--"

"I'm not your handyman."

Thor blinks, confused. "Someone you hire to fix things," Dr. Foster clarifies. "Loki, the first thing Thor wanted to do when he got here was look for you." She wants to mediate between them. She thinks anything she has to say might be relevant to what is between them. She is a gnat. Loki would like to pull her wings off.

Thor looks horrified. "Brother--"

"Do you imagine I couldn't have returned whenever I wanted?" Loki interrupts. "I don't need the Bifrost to travel between realms. I didn't want to see you."

He's a connoisseur of hurting the two of them, Thor and himself. The true beauty of it is that seeing Loki hurt hurts Thor, and Loki feels Thor's pain like his own. But there are nuances, subtle differences: Loki hurting himself makes Thor feel powerless. Loki is Thor's only failure, and that thrills him like the crack of a whip on his skin. Hurting Thor directly, on the other hand, brings this look of betrayal and incomprehension, followed by dull determination as Thor scrabbles for a way to turn it into a misunderstanding, or, if that fails, into his own fault. Anything rather than face the truth. 

Dr. Foster's eyebrows go up. "Well, this is family business, I'll just wait in the hall."

Loki lets her go. He can always hurt her later. He keeps his eyes on Thor. "It isn't family business. We aren't family. Didn't Odin tell you?" Odin hasn't. That much is obvious. Loki hates his father for leaving this task to him--but he relishes it, too. "I'm Laufey's son," he says. "Father--" He hadn't meant to say that. "Odin took me from Jotunheim." He ought to show Thor his true self. He doesn't. Not yet. He wants Thor to reject the brother he knows. His smile widens. "I'm not your brother. I'm not even an Asgardian."

"That isn't true," Thor says.

"Ask Father. Ask Mother. They didn't tell you because they were afraid you'd give the game away. You would never have been able to pretend a frost giant was your brother."

It could easily be a lie. Even if he showed Thor his true face, it could be an illusion. But Thor believes him, simply because he says it. Thor was always an easy mark. His heartbroken face is exhilarating, better even than Loki thought it would be. He hasn't felt agony this sharp for months. 

"How--how long have you known?" Thor's voice is ragged.

Loki goes in for the kill. "I've always known. I've been plotting your destruction from the first. If Odin hadn't got in the way--"

Thor doesn't believe him. Thor never believes him. "But before you fell, you said--"

" _I LIED!_ " Loki screams. " _I always lie! How can you still not understand that?_ "

Thor shakes his head. "Our love was not a lie."

Loki's face twists out of his control with the force of his rage. "What affection could a frost giant possibly feel for an Asgardian?"

Thor's head continues to swing back and forth. There is always a terrible weight to his movements. His refusal is crushing and inexorable as an avalanche. "When we fight with words, you always win."

"Why bother with words?" Loki can feel his eyes glittering, his features dancing with cruelty. "Tell me to know my place! Drag me back to Asgard with your hammer. Don't tell me this is a problem Mjolnir can't solve for you!"

Part of him wants it. He wishes he could tear that part out of him and torture it to death, slowly.

Thor's head stills. "No. I will not force you, brother. I am sorry for my words in Jotunheim. I was a boy playing at being king. But we are men. I cannot tell you your place now. It is for you to find. But if you decide you want the one you have left, it stands always open for you."

It only inflames him further, the ease with which Thor apologizes. The ease with which he assumes Odin will forgive. "I am not a man!"

Thor doesn't answer. He turns and leaves, shoulders bowed, the door shutting resolutely behind him. He even manages to make giving up seem noble. He's free of Loki, and there's not a drop of blood anywhere on him. Loki screams, screening the sound so Thor won't hear. He hefts the bottle of champagne and hurls it straight at the television. A new flatscreen, it doesn't even break, just topples backwards with a minor crash. Loki screams louder at its defiance and throws the sofa at the window. It's thick safety glass and doesn't shatter, but the bucket of ice makes a satisfying noise, at least--

Someone tries the door from the other side. Has Thor returned? Loki freezes. With a little magic, he could throw himself through the window with enough force to break it. 

"Brother!" Thor bellows. He tries the door several more times, apparently puzzled as to why the handle moves even when the door is locked. Loki is gathering himself for the leap when the door smashes inward, propelled by Mjolnir's power. "Brother, I--"

Loki charges him, shrieking. " _I am_ not _your brother!_ " 

He knows Thor is holding back. He _knows_ it. _Hurt me!_ he screams inwardly. _You'll have to one of these days!_ He fights with everything he has, and Thor is holding back, and yet he still forces Loki against the wall in minutes. 

But Loki isn't really fighting with everything he has. He's holding back too. He hasn't used his magic. He hasn't frozen Thor where he stands. 

"I don't want to fight you, brother," Thor says. His armor feels hard and strange pressing against Loki through his soft human clothes.

Thor's never even needed to fight in order to win. Loki has been conquered from the moment he entered Asgard.

"Loki. Please."

Loki is shocked by the sound of his own name on Thor's lips. _Is_ it even his name? Laufey must have called him something else, once. "We aren't brothers." He's going to cry. The tear hovers and falls. He lets his true skin emerge. The tears freeze in his eyes, painful spars when he blinks.

"I never knew a frost giant could cry," Thor says slowly.

"You knew we were vicious, lying monsters," Loki hurls at him. "It's surprising you never made the connection."

"I never thought you were a monster."

No. He never did. He was never frightened by Loki's uncontrollable childhood rages. He was never shocked by the floods of tears afterwards. He was never horrified by Loki's lies or tricks, never saw the subtle cruelty in them. He never seemed to think Loki was anything out of the ordinary at all. 

Loki almost believed it himself, such was the power of Thor's conviction. He lets the blue creep over his skin. Thor's hands are on his clothes. It won't hurt him just yet. Let him feel the cold.

"I don't want to leave you here," Thor says intently. His voice hums with power, like thunder. He doesn't turn away from Loki's terrible blue face. Loki doesn't know what else he can do. His rage is turning to exhaustion. Hurting Dr. Foster seems like a terrible effort. He wants to sleep.

"We are men now," Thor says. "We can choose. And if I could choose any man in the nine realms to be my brother, I would choose you. Monster or no."

" _Why?_ "

Thor chuckles. "Unlike you, I do not ask my heart why it beats. Love needs no reasons." He clasps the back of Loki's blue neck, wincing good-naturedly at the pain. Loki's skin stings too. He pulls the frost back a few inches, just enough to feel Thor's hand as simple warm contact. He has imagined Thor's hands around his neck a thousand times. This--this is unimaginable. "What say you, Loki? Will you take me as the brother of your heart?"

Loki convulses into his false, familiar self. Wrenching sobs wrack his body, hot tears streaming down his pink cheeks. And just as he has since they were children, Thor holds him in a fierce embrace and doesn't pull away.

Once Loki thought he and Thor belonged together, bound by blood and bone and destiny. He had thought this was his birthright. Now only the slender thread of Thor's affection binds them. But make your stitches small and tight enough, and fabric wears through before the thread breaks. 

"I cannot go back to Asgard," he says when the tears are over. His voice is hoarse and low, like Laufey's. "I will attempt to repair the Bifrost. But Asgard is my home no longer."

"You mean to stay here?" Thor blinks, incredulous that after this moment of catharsis, everything has not worked out exactly as he had planned. Loki grits his teeth; the seeds of resentment send forth new shoots so easily. 

"I don't know," Loki says. "There are many places in the Realms I have not yet explored." As he says it, the possibility becomes real. He can travel, and learn. He can visit new places without Thor and his companions, and do things there other than fight their inhabitants and drink new kinds of ale. 

"Will you go to Jotunheim?" Thor looks frightened. Still not of him. For him. Perhaps, too, he is afraid Loki will find his true home there. 

Loki cannot go to Jotunheim as himself. He slew their king and rained destruction upon them. He would be killed on sight. "Perhaps. It is my true home, after all."

###

"I sent Jane back to her RV," Thor says. "Should I telephone her? I have no wish to trespass upon your hospitality." His hope for an invitation to stay is obvious, his attempts at manipulation as pitifully transparent as ever. 

"My home is yours, brother." Loki waves ironically at the wreckage of the room. 

Thor misses the sarcasm and beams. He rights the sofa with ease. "Let us send for a new television. I love television. Have you seen _Buffy: Slayer of Vampires_?" 

###

Hours later, Thor shakes him awake. Loki's drooling on Thor's breastplate. "Your rooms grow cold, brother. Is it your frost giant magic?"

Loki rubs at his eyes. "It's air conditioning." He waves at the thermostat. "You turn the dial. Human magic."

Thor crosses to it. Loki lets his head drop to the couch.

"What do the numbers mean?"

"Set it to 68."

"Why? Is it a mystical number?"

Loki has no idea. He only knows that thermostats are always set to 65, 68, or 70, never the numbers in between. He must follow the rules to slip by unnoticed, until the time comes to break them. He shrugs and closes his eyes. The last thing he hears before he slips back into sleep is Thor telling room service to send up a banquet, and then changing his order to four plates of spaghetti and a lobster.


End file.
